Starbucks will close for racial-bias training

Starbucks’ C-level executives announced on Tuesday that they would close in excess of 8,000 stores nationwide on May 29 to conduct racial-bias training for nearly 175,000 employees. The announcement was made in response to two African-American men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, who were arrested for trespassing on April 12 at a Starbucks in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square neighborhood. The 23-year-old Nelson and 23-year-old Robinson were at this establishment waiting to have a business meeting with a man named Andrew Yaffe.

“We were there for a real reason, a real deal that we were working on,” Robinson told the Associated Press. “We put in a lot of time, energy, effort … We were at a moment that could have a positive impact on a whole ladder of people, lives, families. So I was like, ‘No, you’re not stopping that right now.’”

A district attorney dropped the trespassing charges and the duo contend that their detainment violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.